


Meeting One

by thecookiemomma



Series: Widowed Bastards Club [1]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s12e11 Check, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 19:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3146402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecookiemomma/pseuds/thecookiemomma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>United by common experiences, three men commiserate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meeting One

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a series. It may turn slash, it may not. Dedicated to my friend Smackalicious who will get it, and who is a mutual sounding board, because of reasons.

Gibbs sat on his chair downstairs, a glass of bourbon in his hand. He watched the amber liquid swirl as he rolled the glass around a little. It was a mindless move, something he'd learned from Beck, actually.

 

_Isn't **that** a kick in the pants. She's kicking the booze, and I'm here drowning in it._

 

He looked up toward the stairs, somehow expecting Diane to visit him again, cuss him out, make some sort of comment about his virility, and stomp off. She'd never do that again. And Beck was in danger. And it was his damn fault for going off. For losing control. He knew that bastard had something in mind for her that would tear him apart. A quiet voice in the back of his mind said that they'd get her into protective custody, and then Sergei would shoot the driver of the car. At least Beck didn't have any kids. Thank God for small – minuscule – favors. 

 

As he sat there for mindless moments staring at the stairs, he heard voices. “Down here,” he called, knowing that whoever was here was here to see him. 

 

“Jethro.” Fornell walked down the stairs, tread heavy, slow. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He gestured up to the other man following him down. 

 

“Tobias. Leon.” He saluted both of them, drained the glass, and filled it again. 

 

“Gibbs.” Leon grimaced at the sight of his primary Supervisory Agent drinking bourbon. “If Mohammed . . .” He stopped mid-phrase, waving off the rest. “You got another one of those jars?” 

 

“Or two.” Fornell's voice was cracking. Gibbs looked up at him, and a wild empathy filled him. He knew it hadn't hit the other man yet. 

 

“Where's Emily?” Gibbs' first question, his first worry was for the women and children. Maybe that made him a chauvinist, an outdated, backwards Marine, but he couldn't change that part of him. Didn't even want to. 

 

“With her grandmother. I had to . . . I had some . . .” 

 

“Yeah.” Gibbs gestured to the sawhorses, and pulled a couple jars down. He filled them, and set them down on the table. 

 

Each man came to get his own, and Leon held his up. “To that cruel bitch fate, may she find another family to fuck with.” 

 

“Hear, hear,” both of the other men echoed, voices bittersweet and wry. All three of them knocked back their drinks and set their glasses down again. Gibbs refilled them, and they picked them up again. 

 

“Much more, and you're crashin' here,” Gibbs decided. “Don't have . . .” He gestured up to the rest of the house. “Guest bedroom, one main bedroom, and the couch. Enough room for all of us. Damn tight fit, but . . .” 

 

Tobias grunted, and the three men fell silent. 

 

Predictably, it was Tobias who spoke first. “You know, Gibbs, I get it. Years and years I've known you, and I have never understood you. I thought, 'the man's been married three times. How in the hell could he have just . . .'” He gestured wildly. 

 

“Just what, Tobias?” Gibbs asked, honestly interested. Most of the normal bite was absent from his voice, he noticed. It was probably the bourbon. 

 

But Leon spoke, humming an agreement. “I didn't get it either. Saw your file, thought maybe I'd missed something in it. That you had some hidden agenda, or some selfish crusade to find somethin' that was impossible to find.” 

 

“Except,” Tobias picked up the thread. “Didn't realize you'd had it, held it in your hands, hell, held it in your arms, and lost it.” 

 

Gibbs huffed out a dark sigh. “Didn't want you to know.” He paused, took another long drink, and then sighed again. “I got her killed. She only talked to Beck because of me.” 

 

“Now, wait a damn minute.” Leon frowned. “None of this is your fault. Nothin' up to the point where you lost your control and choked the man, and didn't finish the damn job.” However, there was no real recrimination in his voice. Gibbs knew what Leon was thinking: he really had no room to talk. He'd allowed them all to go off-reservation and deal with Bodnar themselves rather than insisting that whoever succeeded Eli take care of it. 

 

“That was bad enough. Now, Beck's in danger.” _And her jackass lawyer,_ he didn't add. 

 

“You forget, Jethro. I've been talking to Diane . . .” Fornell's voice cracked on her name, and both the other men looked up at him, eyes full of clear empathy. “Talking to her the whole time she's been chatty with Rebecca. Who, I might add, hates being called Becky or Becks, or Beck . . .” He smirked when Jethro smirked at him knowingly. “But you were married to her, so you know.” 

 

“Yeah, Tobias, I know.” It was one of the things he decided to do when they split. It was kind of a stab at her refusal to acknowledge his needs, his words, or anything he offered. He grimaced, and took another pull on his drink. 

 

“You're well on your way to drunk, Gibbs.” Leon sounded somewhat surprised. 

 

“Well, yeah, Leon,” Gibbs shook his head. “I got another one of my wives killed. Of _course_ I'm gettin' drunk.” 

 

“Didn't we already have this discussion?” Leon moved over closer to the other man, grabbing the drink from his hand and setting it down. “I'm gonna act like you do with your team here, Gibbs,” he continued, completely ignoring Gibbs' confused and skeptical look. He stuck a finger beneath Gibbs' chin, forced him to meet his eyes, and stared at him for a long moment. “You. Are. Not. Omnipotent.” Gibbs heard Tobias snort derisively at the words, or maybe just Leon's attempt at getting through to him. He didn't have anywhere to look but into Leon's dark eyes. “Shannon wasn't your fault. Kelly wasn't your fault. If for some damn-fool reason you think so, Jackie _certainly_ wasn't your fault. Jenny wasn't your fault. Diane wasn't your fault. Rebecca wasn't your fault.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again, his expression softer, more sympathy than steel. “Now, I'm not sayin' you're perfect, mind, but you made the choices you made with the information you had. I know what you've known. Maybe not all of it, but most of it. I've looked through all of those reports. Including Rivera's, Gibbs. Including that cold case file.” 

 

Gibbs felt himself draw a sharp breath, adrenaline trying to pulse through his relaxed body. He thought of a million things to say, but he kept quiet. 

 

“That was another thing that I didn't understand. I didn't want to believe that it'd been you. That you'd intentionally, in cold blood, pulled a trigger on a man from two miles away without sanction. Then . . . I learned exactly why you did it. Did the same damn thing. Maybe not my gun, but my agency. I got it. I get it. It might not have been strictly _right_ , but nobody's gonna fault you for it. Your team doesn't. You know damn well they know.” 

 

“Yeah, they know,” Gibbs nodded, as much as he could while his head was held in place. 

 

“They still follow you around like impressed ducklings.” 

 

“I'm keepin' that metaphor, Leon,” Fornell jibed.

 

“You got anything to add, Fornell?” Leon asked, stepping back and letting the other man speak. 

 

“Yeah. I don't blame you for this, Jethro. Diane is . . . Diane was a strong . . . a headstrong woman. She got everything she wanted, and if she didn't, she moved on, or changed things to make it all work for her and Emily. She's got a whole thing set up for Emily. Kid could eat caviar and sleep at the Hilton for years if she wanted. It's all put away in funds I can't touch, but I wouldn't want to.” He looked down into his drink. “I'm ramblin'. Sound like Abby. What I'm tryin' to say is if you'd have known and tried to stop it, she'd have marched right up there, demanding to know who in the hell you were to . . .” That was it. That was the breaking point. He drained his glass and threw it _hard_ against the wall where it shattered. The other two men flinched at the sound, but beyond looking at him, they said nothing. Long seconds stretched out into interminable minutes, and still, the three men stayed silent, each lost in their own grief, their own world. 

 

Gibbs looked down at his own empty jar. “You break it, Tobias, you don't get any more.” It was a pitiful attempt to inject a little dark humor into the conversation, and he knew the moment the words came out of his mouth that it would fall flat. And it did. “Aw, hell, Tobias.” He jerked his head up toward the stairs. “C'mon. Let's go find some place more comfortable to sit down. I'm not leavin' you alone tonight.” 

 

“And I'm not leavin' _you_ alone,” Leon added his rejoinder. But he started toward the stairs, a little unsteady. “Haven't drunk so much in a while. And definitely not liquor.” 

 

“Lightweight,” Tobias teased, but his gait wasn't that steady. Gibbs figured he'd had a drink or two before he'd come over. Knowing his team, they'd sat with him for a while, and that usually included some kind of alcohol. 

 

The three of them wobbled their way into the living room, Gibbs and Fornell sitting on the couch and Leon taking the easy chair. The uneasy silence fell around them for another long stretch of time – Gibbs didn't care how long it was, and he wasn't about to look at some damn clock to see – and then Leon asked the question. “So, it was Rebecca who came after you with the golf club? That before or after you caught her with the lawyer?” 

 

“Before,” Gibbs let the memories replay through his mind. “She was drunk. She was soused for most of our marriage.” 

 

“Sounds like it.” 

 

Gibbs knew his 'caffeine fast' had ended, at least for now, so he made them a pot of coffee, and they drank that as they sat and talked about the women they'd lost. He even told a couple of stories about Shannon. Time seemed to go a little more quickly with the stories. He had to admit to himself that it settled something in him to have people willing to listen to the story without pity and without trying to fix it. Leon was starting to understand the power of memory. Gibbs had taken a damn long time to catch on. It wasn't the memories that hurt; it was keeping them all locked up in a box. You did that, and the ones that would bubble to the surface would catch you off guard like a kick to the crotch. If you took them out one by one, savored them, and hung them on the wall like pictures, the pain faded,. The memories became flat, but sunny, flat memories were infinitely better than sharp, dark memories laced with hidden pain. 

 

It would be up to him to try to keep his best friend from falling into that.  _ Hell of a thing. _ It was the least he could do. He still felt responsible for a lot of it, and maybe this would be his own way of making amends. Maybe he'd learned something from Rebecca after all. 

 

The coffee in his system seemed to have the opposite effect, or didn't have a chance of working against all the alcohol. He found himself listing to one side. Fornell made a comment about refusing to move, so Gibbs just laid down and Fornell ended up curling up against him. Leon pulled the lever on the easy chair, leaning back and closing his eyes. It didn't take long for all three of them to fall asleep. Gibbs knew they had formed a bond, only cemented by the feeling of warm dampness against his shoulder, the moistness in his own eyes, and the hitch in Leon's breath as they fell asleep. 


End file.
